When I was a teenager I used to plaster the walls of my room with pictures of The Beatles and Rolling Stones as well as Twiggy wearing fabulous fashion.

These days my taste in wall art is a little more mature, but what we all have in common is the desire to decorate the walls of our homes with artwork that we find attractive or that means something to us.

Art doesn’t have to be original art or have investment value to be enjoyable. But what if you decide you would like to buy art that will give you pleasure as well as perhaps gaining in value?

Where to go? Should it be to a department store, Ebay, a market, shopping online or an art gallery?

An art gallery is one fairly obvious solution but I think many of us are a bit scared of going into one. So can I tell you about a gallery where there is no pressure to buy, where you feel as though you are looking at an art exhibition without a sales person breathing down your neck?

The annual StART exhibition at the RBSA Gallery in Birmingham is really like a January sale of art. The exhibition makes collecting art affordable with all original artworks at £300 or under – many well under.

All works on display are by current RBSA Members and Associates, many of whom are well known nationally. Buy the art you love and it could also be a real investment.

The RBSA is an artist-led charity which supports artists and promotes the visual arts through a range of activities, exhibitions, workshops and demonstrations.

It owns and runs its own exhibition venue, the RBSA Gallery, located just off St Paul’s Square near Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter, only a short walk from the city centre.

So grab yourself a bargain or just go and have a look around the gallery – rather a lovely thing to do in the post-Christmas lull. The exhibition runs from December 30 to February 6, 2016. Check RBSA’s website for opening hours: http://www.rbsa.org.uk

The images shown here are from last year’s StART exhibition but you are likely to find works of a similar standard and genre this year.

The artist Marcel Duchamp stated that art was anything he called “art” and he proceeded to illustrate this by displaying ordinary objects out of their original context, such as a men’s urinal that he displayed in 1917, entitled Fountain!

This caused a huge furore amongst traditional artists of the time, of course.

By World War I, Duchamp had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists, like Henri Matisse, as “retinal” art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted to make art that was more cerebral.

My own feeling is that art should touch the head and heart of the viewer and should have an emotional content. But everyone is different and has different tastes, so that what one may love, another may consider to be rubbish.

As it’s January I fear that many of us will feel under pressure to give something up! I don’t think you should necessarily do this. I would suggest instead taking something up.

You only have to look in the What’s On pages of this magazine to find a new and worthwhile hobby or interest. Maybe join a cycling group if you’re sporty, or an angling group if you like a more restful time; join an art group, gardening club or a choir.

I’ve never come across more on offer in a relatively small community. Of course you could make a New Year’s resolution to go and buy some original Art at StART.